Ego? No Sir Alex, an agent is in it for hard cash

ONCE upon a rapacious time the quickest way to become sincerely rich was to buy into a commercial television station.

One who famously did called it a licence to print money.

It is a much dodgier investment now which is why, next time round, I'm coming back as a footballer's agent.

Imagine, if you like, the folowing: 'Now, Sir Alex, you want to keep David Beckham at Manchester United when his contract runs out? Then shall we say Pounds 100,000 a week?' In olden days they used to hang highwaymen. Blackmail is still a nasty business. But there is no law against a football agent trebling the figure he first thought of to enrich his client.

He can argue that American baseballers get three times as much, that Hollywood pays some dim actor Pounds 10million per picture, that Elton John eclipses the lot of them for tinkling the ivories and occasionally watching Watford FC. It is the law of supply and demand.

Always there is the veiled threat by the players' agents that 'if you don't come up with the readies, guv, my client's off'.

This week Sir Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, blew his top about agents' interventions.

'Agents demand this kind of money,' he said. 'So they can go round to their other clients saying, "I got this and that for so-and-so". Agents asking for such-and-such is rubbish. It's just an ego trip for them.'

Actually Sir Alex missed a trick here. It has less to do with ego than hard cash. He should have pointed out that sports agents usually levy fees of between 10 and 25 per cent for fixing deals for their clients.

This is why players are constantly on the move from club to club or are at least said to be doing so by, 'information' conveniently leaked to reporters in search of a headline labelled exclusive.

I have no problem, as the current cliche goes, with great footballers living in large houses down long drives with a Ferrari or two in the garage.

They are the 21st century's great entertainers.

Indeed, I have nothing in principle against agents, apart from their insatiable avarice.

Had the great Tommy Lawton used one I would never have spent that awful Sunday afternoon in a Nottingham semidetached with him in his retirement, when there was only lino on the floor and a miniature black-and-white TV. Nor would I have flogged around the tiny grounds of the Western League with my hero, Wilf Mannion, when he was trying to make a few quid at the end of his career with Poole Town.

It was Jimmy Hill, backed by a reputable agent, the late Bage-nal Harvey, who did more than any other to free the modern footballer from the sheer slavery of a pitiful maximum wage.

But the pendulum has swung so far in the opposite direction that the players' expectations, not to mention those of their wives, are now preposterous.

A few of my good friends are sports agents and they won't like this piece at all. Gentlemen, too bad.

Tony, give Kate a Cabinet call QUESTION: Who was the person who this week extolled the virtues of sports in schools in the following terms?

'I see sport as a pro-education policy, a pro-health policy, an anticrime, an anti-drug policy. It teaches children to perform under pressure, work in teams and deal with winning and losing in equal measure.' Well, good on yer, Tone, because that's what we've been ranting on about in these pages for years.

Cynically, one might observe our Prime Minister's only previous acknowledgement that sport existed was a claimed affinity with Newcastle United, that he was speaking on the back of a British gold rush at the Sydney Olympics and had the date of an imminent General Election up his sleeve.

But there's no carping from me about his pledge to invest Pounds 1billion in sport in schools and make the little ankle-biters play properly organised combative games for at least two hours a week.

There's no better way to spend some of that Lottery profit he's got stashed away.

Two points, however. In the event of a Labour second term, a prospect not viewed around here with much enthusiasm, let him immediately reappoint Kate Hoey as Minister of Sport.

And put her in the Cabinet, too, where she can add some tangible power to her energy and common sense.

Boxing must make more use of Barry

HERE are a few words in p r a i s e o f B a r ry McGuigan, the gutsiest little fighter you ever saw in the prize-ring.

Having seen Robinson, Ali, Frazier and our own 'Enry in the great days, I am utterly indifferent about the survival of professional boxing now that it is a tawdry mess of no-hopers fighting non-contests for spurious titles to fill in the gaps between lucrative TV commercials.

Calm, precise with words and sentence construction, I have rarely heard a sportsman more articulate in front of a cluster of microphones.

If boxing has any brains left it will elevate this man to a position of considerable authority.

In brief, this Marathon Ms merits short shrift

AT the moment Athens is struggling to convince the world that it can host an adequate, let alone vibrant Olympic Games in 2004.

Following Sydney's triumph in 2000, that was always going to be a problem.

And the last thing it needed was for Ms Sandra Jen, credentials unknown, to wave a diktat in its face declaring that under the European Union's Habitats Directive it was constructing its rowing and canoeing centre in an area of ecological and cultural significance and should desist immediately.

Ms Jen, of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, called upon the European Union to withhold any funds it intended to give Athens towards its Olympic building programme.

I wasn't aware the EU was intending to donate anything towards the 2004 Olympics and, if it were, it shouldn't. The Plain of Marathon, steeped in ancient Olympic history, is a classic site for modern Olympic combat.

Anyway, Ms Jen has had her 15 minutes of notoriety and let's hope that's the last we ever hear of her.